


Diomedes.

by crocodileinterior



Category: DCU (Comics), Smallville, Superman - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Gen, Krypton Survives, Kryptonians, Kryptonians invaded Earth, M/M, Starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-20 19:10:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22548334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crocodileinterior/pseuds/crocodileinterior
Summary: The planet Krypton did not survive, but over 10,000 Kryptonians did. Fifteen years ago, they colonized Earth. Lu-thor- using the code name Diomedes- is a freedom fighter to some, a terrorist to others, and Kal-el has been entrusted with interrogating him in prison.
Relationships: Clark Kent & Lex Luthor, Clark Kent/Lex Luthor
Comments: 26
Kudos: 89





	Diomedes.

Lex Luthor was 9 years old when he saw fire raining down from the sky. What had been called a freak meteor shower at the time had first been reported from Hong Kong, then Soweto, then near the Tibetan border of India, next in rural Kansas…

People in cities, in towns, and even in cornfields, all across the globe took shelter, put out fires, grabbed their loved ones and ran through smoke filled streets avoiding the debris of falling asphalt as the sky seemed to fall all around them.

But in the penthouse of the family’s Metropolis apartment, Lex Luthor was worried about something else. And he sat with his face so close to the television monitor he could feel the static of the tv sparking against his skin and rewound the news footage to the same four seconds again and again, holding it on pause to squint between the lines of the flickering picture. The family's bodyguard gripped his shoulder- “We have to leave now, Mr.Luthor. Your father will meet you at the bunker.” But Lex shrugged off his hand without averting his eyes from the screen and rewound one more time.

“There’s something…” he murmured aloud, tracing the shape of the shadow, obscured by billows of smoke pouring from the crater left on impact by the hulk of twisted metal, on the monitor with his hand. “There’s something coming out.”

And when he hit play again, he could swear he saw the shadow in that space of incredible heat and swirling dust, move.

\- - -

In 1989 over the span of two weeks, over 100 ships from the destroyed planet Krypton crash-landed to Earth and over 10,000 Kryptonians became refugees under a yellow sun. Twenty two years later, Kryptonians inhabited every major city of Earth and their population grew every year.

Kal-el was in a privileged position to understand humanity and the customs of earth because unlike most of his kind, he had spent the majority of his life there. He was one of seventeen children who had been taken from Krypton in infancy and who had no memories of life on their home planet. These seventeen children were considered among the Kryptonians to be symbols of hope in the new colony. The children of the future. And as such when they’d grown of age they all were given responsibilities in the new world that were representative of their status both as ambassadors of Krypton but also as a tie that bound the Kryptonians with the humans and with earth.

To Kal, earth was his home and humans were his people as much as his family was. He learned to read and write in English and Mandarin Chinese before even mastering Kryptonese writing. Unlike most of the Kryptonians who had fallen to earth, he knew his home planet only through anecdote, through video and simulation, but more real to him was the grass on earth, the smell of the dirt, of the wild flowers, the warm glow of the yellow sun that had nurtured him since he’d been seven months old.

He savored his time spent among the earthlings through his diplomacy work and his duties as a protector. Half of his work life was spent in service to the human race- who the Kryptonians sometimes referred to affectionately as ‘their hosts’ on the planet. He averted natural disasters, provided civic assistance, and though crime had worldwide decreased in the last twenty years, it was part of the Kryptonians duties to enforce that that statistic continued to go down. Some days Kal just helped carry down cats who’d got stuck in a tree. Kal could fly. Not all the Kryptonians could. It seemed to come easier to those who’d arrived on earth when they were still young.

The other half of Kal’s work life was within the Kryptonian science guild. When the Kryptonians had first landed, many of the technology they brought from Krypton had seemed like magic to the humans. But in turn, Earth provided a fresh mystery of science to the Kryptonians for them to discover. Kal liked to make things grow. He’d focused on plant life in his teenage years and experimented with the resiliency of edible plants in variable temperature conditions and success of seed fertility.

He preoccupied himself with the cultivation of life. Of the protection of it. Kal had seen humans die. They were a fragile race. His father reminded him frequently that not all of them could be saved. Kal was one of the Kryptonian ambassadors to North America but his father had been the first. Kal had never really experienced war. His father had. When the earth had still been fragmented into self-governing federal districts. Reactions to the arrival of thousands of super powered aliens had been met with varying degrees of acceptance from the worldwide governments and the United States, then a powerful military entity, had shown one of the most aggressive responses. The first five years after their arrival had been... difficult. Many humans had died and some Kryptonians too. The Kryptonians did not want to wipe out humanity. Jor-el himself was one of the high council who most firmly defended that. Even when others argued that it might be easier. But ultimately the Kryptonians, though much fewer in number, had the strength and had the technology to persevere. The humans of earth were pacified. And in the wreckage remaining from the conflict, something new and greater was built in its place. A relationship between the two races. A peace.

Kal had never seen a Kryptonian die. There hadn’t been a Kryptonian death on earth in 15 years. And then there had been 30 in one day. In the span of an instant and a cloud of green smoke, a leveled street block, an explosion of screams and shattering concrete that Kal had heard from miles away as vividly as if he’d been standing on the scene himself among the littered and torn open remains of bodies that were meant to be invincible.

For months the Kryptonian military guild had been tracking activity from a terrorist who went by the codename of Diomedes. Crime was almost unheard of since peace had been achieved and this criminal activity was extremely disturbing to both the human populace as well as the Kryptonians who even with the full focus of their efforts could not pin down the identity or location of the one responsible, not even clues. He’d started with an explosion The First National Bank of New Kryptonopolis but while it had caused a temporary stalling of business there had been no deaths, only a few injured. Then there had been a handful of other smaller targeted attacks- never with any trace left behind. They hadn’t even been sure at that point if the perpetrator had been one person or a group of them, if they had been human or Kryptonian. In fact, it had mostly been assumed that it was a group of Kryptonians, for it seemed impossible that one human could have organized them all and escaped detection for so long. But then there had been the kryptonite bomb. And the criminal had been at the scene. To admire his own work. He’d been seen and caught on camera. Standing amongst the bodies of the Kryptonians. Their facial recognition software had identified him as (Alexander) Lu-thor, a human who had been presumed dead and living under the radar for over 8 years. This time they had been able to track him down to an underground bunker from which the Kryptonian military had extracted him and arrested him.

The prisoner facing 30 consecutive life sentences sat in the center of the room with his back to the door and the first thing Kal noticed was his head was shaved down to bare skin and behind his left ear stretching like a landmass on a map across the back of his scalp was a faded scar from a chemical burn. He sat in the chair straight backed but not tense and when Kal came closer he saw that his hands were folded in his lap but only one of his hands was normal flesh and blood, his other arm stopped at the wrist and attached was a crudely formed bionic prosthetic- structured loosely in the shape of fingers and a palm.

He was… young. He couldn’t have been much older than Kal. Younger than he’d expected him to be. But Kal didn’t know what he’d expected him to be like. He’d never met a mass murderer before. His eyes were closed and his face smooth, neutral. Like he was asleep. His lips formed prettily into a cupid’s bow but at the dip in the center there was a thin scar that accentuated the curved shape. His lips moved before his eyes opened.

“The soul is the prison of the body. Michel Foucault said that.” he spoke. “He may have had a point. Man in society is subjugated by the discipline of his own construction, of the constant coercion that he internalizes. But I would argue… that prison is the prison of the body in this case.”

He opened his eyes. They were as green as a magnolia leaf and though the rest of his body never stirred, they focused on Kal with a level of intensity that made the hair on the back of his neck stand at attention.

“Who are you?” Lu-thor asked, but with such confidence of inflection that it barely registered as a question. When Kal didn’t immediately respond, he continued. “You aren’t one of the guards here and you aren’t part of the military guild.”

“I’m Kal-el. I’m part of the science guild.” Kal finally managed to stutter out and to his own horror his arm instinctively twitched forward as if to shake hands before he aborted the gesture and forced it back to his side. Lu-thor watched the display unimpressed.

“And? To what do I owe the pleasure?” he drawled.

“I’m…” Kal started slowly. “Here to interview you. To study you, you could say.”

Lu-thor leaned back into the chair he was sitting on, his fingers splaying across his knee and Kal noticed that the fingers of his prosthetic hand moved in the same way- though it looked like not much more than a poorly sodered hunk of scrap metal it was responsive apparently.

“To study me? And what area of study would that be? Criminology?”

“I’m a biologist. Actually.”

“Ah.” This seemed to amuse Lu-thor for his eyebrows rose slightly and while he didn’t quite smile, the slit of his mouth widened. “Because to Kryptonians, even a human who kills thirty of their kind is nothing more than an aberration of an otherwise docile species, a biological quirk worthy of research.”

This gave Kal pause and he impotently opened and closed his mouth to speak twice before finally settling on saying “Crimes of this violent a nature have been very rare for the last ten years, among humans **_or_** Kryptonians.”

Lu-thor’s mouth settled back into a straight line but he chuckled, very dryly. “Then I suppose I must be exceptional.”

Kal walked over to the desk in the cell and picked up the chair in front of it, bringing it around and placing it in front of Lu-thor and sitting, so they were face to face.

“Yes.” Kal said seriously. “You are. That’s why I’ve been sent to study your mind.”

Lu-thor tipped back in his chair, almost until the front legs of it lifted off the ground and looked perplexingly smug. “Can’t you just have one of your computers do that? Surely nothing is secret from the advances of Kryptonian technology.”

Kal frowned. “We have no device that can see into a person’s thoughts.”

“Neither did we.” Lu-thor said, maintaining an unsettling eye contact with Kal. “We called human consciousness a black box. But I suppose that reference is lost on you. We haven’t had airplanes since the invasion.”

Kal raised his eyebrows. “Invasion?”

“Yes.”

“Most call it ‘the arrival.’”

Lu-thor shrugged. “Another outdated reference. In our science fiction films the aliens were always invading- never arriving.”

“Yes.” Kal said hesitantly. “Because the term ‘invasion’ implies hostility.”

Lu-thor tipped his head to one side. “And your presence here doesn’t?”

Kal’s throat released a nervous sort of half cough half laugh under the scrutiny of Lu-thor’s unwavering gaze. But then, though Kal had only just sat down, Lu-thor abruptly stood up and began to walk around leisurely with his hands in the pockets of his jumpsuit.

“This place was not always called America. Do you know how it got that name?” Lu-thor asked.

Kal shifted in his seat, unsure if he should also stand up now that Lu-thor had. It left Lu-thor with the illusion of power. A conscious choice on his part, Kal was sure. But maybe that was for the best. He wanted Lu-thor to keep talking, though now he wasn’t sure if he was going to like any of what he heard.

“Er- no.” Kal admitted. “History of the Old World isn’t my area of expertise.”

“Of course not.” Lu-thor said. “It isn’t even taught in human schools. When I was a child our history was marked by After Davids and Before Christs. Now, the only things children learn are After Kryptonian.”

Lu-thor waved his hand in the air as if to dismiss the tangent as he turned on his heel, having paced the length of the small room, and began walking in the other direction, still orating as if to a lecture hall-

“America is the name given to this country when the European settlers-” he gestured with air quotes “- _arrived_. When they came in _their_ ships, the Europeans pillaged the already existing communities here and killed innumerable natives with weapons but the worst cause of death was not due to the European’s guns or knives. Do you know what it was from?” he paused for effect. “Germs. Smallpox, cholera, bubonic plague… Sweeping epidemics of disease that depopulated the natives without the Europeans even intending it.”

Kal frowned and crossed his arms over his chest. “We never brought disease to earth.”

Lu-thor whirled around quite suddenly and his scarred lips twisted into a sneer. “You freaks **_are_** the disease.”

He stalked back to the middle of the room until he was standing behind his empty chair. “Your kind are a virus that has stricken our planet. And it can’t be cured with anything as simple as Aminoglycosides or vaccines.”

Kal huffed, not quite standing up to meet Lu-thor’s height but shifting to the edge of his seat. “Now, hold on. Kryptonians have always tried to maintain peace with humans and _preserve_ life here-”

“Oh, yes. Banning guns, alcohol and cigarettes. Then it was cars and motor vehicles- replacing them with self driving Kryptonian tech. All things that have prevented many deaths.”

Kal halted. “So… you agree?”

“Except humans die every time one of your intergalactic sparring mates visits earth. Your enemies from your old planet started following you here and now we can’t go a year without some other alien coming in and trying to destroy us and we have no way to defend ourselves- only you to protect us. Humanity has become helpless and insignificant in our own planet that we should be ruling by our birthright. We are slaves, worshipping the air you fly on. We have no say in our own destiny. You’ve afflicted us with _**weakness**_. It will strangle the life out of this species by inches as sure as any disease. You call us your ‘hosts’? Then you are our parasite.”

At this Kal did stand up. “Is it wrong for us to want to protect the people of the planet we’ve taken refuge on?”

Lu-thor’s hands gripped the back of his chair.

“You are _not_ ,” he hissed “ _refugees_ here. You are _conquerors_. You dismantled our governments and military. And this peace you speak of only exists because you annihilated hundreds of thousands of human lives to achieve it first.”

Kal’s jaw clenched and he took a step closer to Lu-thor. “That was a long time ago. And it was a war we didn’t ask for.”

“Not so long ago.” Lu-thor said airily and passed his good hand over the crown of his head, stroking down to the back of his neck. “I got these burns when I was 14 years old. I got trapped in a chemical fire during one of the final razes of Metropolis. I was lucky. My father died- crushed under the rubble.” Lu-thor conveyed the story with little emotion, but his eyes fixed Kal’s as implacable as if they were shields. “My mother had already died three years earlier. She had a bad heart. She’d been receiving treatment for it all her life. But after Metropolis became a war zone there was no access to medicine, no doctors… She died in a filthy bunker from something that could’ve been treated if the hospital hadn’t already been burned to the ground.”

Kal lowered his eyes. “I’m sorry…. The conversation has taken a dark turn and I-”

“Is that so? Would you rather talk about the Kryptonians I watched die then?”

Kal raised his eyes and saw that Lu-thor for the first time since he’d walked in, was smiling. Kal had seen smiles before that didn’t reach the eyes but this was different for his eyes were burning with a dark glee, a type of giddy rage that made his grin almost a snarl.

“They’re as beautiful when they’re angry as I thought they would be. Like avenging angels that can shoot fire from their eyes. When I saw them like that I wasn’t sure they’d bleed red. But it turns out when you open your kind up you don’t look so different from us under that impenetrable skin. Just bones and meat like any animal.”

Kal walked out of the room and terminated the interview.

**9 Days Later**

**Day 16 of Lu-thor’s Captivity**

Lex had taken on the name Diomedes because he made the gods bleed. On the battlefield before Priam’s palace in Troy, Diomedes whose battle prowess was matched only by Achilles and was the terror of the Trojans, was given the ability to discern gods from man and with his spear struck down Aphrodite and then the war god Ares. So fierce was he that even the war insatiate Ares fled before him in fear.

Lex had taken many books with him to the safe house bunker when the meteors and the ships had started falling from the sky that day, but The Iliad had always been his favorite. The nights (or maybe they had been days since time had no reality in that dark, sealed off, underground room) when the ceilings shook and Lex was sure the world outside was gone, his mother soothed him whispering Homer’s poetry to him, tales of heroes and gods, destiny and bravery.

When Lex had first arrived at the prison he’d been nearly offended to find that they had no handcuffs for him and only one guard stood outside his cell. However, he’d been searched and his room carefully prepared to insure he had nothing he could harm himself or others with. He’d tried, actually, on the first day. To smash his head against the wall. But a guard had appeared behind him so swiftly and silently it was like he’d been there the whole time and was suddenly holding Lex’s shoulders and dragging him back before his forehead ever had a chance to make impact.

He hadn’t been sure what the accommodations would be like. The prison was one of the few in the country and it housed mostly a small population of Kryptonian criminals and a handful of human prisoners. The two populations did not ever interact and solitary confinement was common. He’d only ever seen the building from the outside- it wasn’t like one of the many crystal hives the Kryptonians stored themselves away in that jutted out of the city’s skyline like giant stalagmites. Equally futuristic in style, the prison was a multi story complex of adjoining bubble shaped structures and the interior was all translucents and whites so blindingly pure that it took the eyes a second to adjust to define where the floors ended and the walls began.

The cell was more spacious and luxurious than any of the bunkers Lex had stayed in in the last few years, if he was honest. Even the cot was soft. It was more like a space age hotel room than a prison. On the left there was a large window- made of some type of Kryptonian glass stronger than plexi that blended seamlessly into the concrete wall. And most quixotically, the cell had a fireplace. Not a real one, but a virtual screen that could be switched on with a button that generated heat and projected an image of dancing flames.

His visitor was back. He wasn’t sure he’d come.

All of the Kryptonians were beautiful. Nearly human to look at, the most alien thing about them was their perfection- unblemished glowing skin, statuesque figures, strong jaws and sharp cheekbones. They all looked like they might have been carved from marble. But this Kal-el, Lex thought almost with fondness, was especially beautiful. He had eyes the precise color of the sky on a sunny day and full, rosey, lips. For a scientist he was broad shouldered and muscular, as all the Kryptonian males were, and the contours of his thighs were hugged by the dark blue skinsuit he wore underneath the long gaudy red tunic of the science guild. And his hair- Lex was always quick to notice another person’s hair, as he had none of his own- Kal’s was lustrous and thick, framing his face in elegant, dark, waves.

Kal was about as non-threatening as 6 foot 3 inches of alien super being could be. While Lex had mostly dealt with Kryptonian military who were all tight lipped and stoic, Kal-el’s emotions played so readily and unhidden across his face it was almost comical. And Lex intimidated him- that much was clear. When he entered the cell he hovered by the door nervously as if he’d been left alone in a cage with a hungry tiger.

Lex didn’t move from where he stood by the fake fireplace, watching the flames with his hands in his pockets.

“I’m just enjoying your Kryptonian hospitality.” Lex said.

Kal made a sour face like a pouting child and said petulantly, “I thought you hated everything Kryptonian and thought we were cruel.”

Lex smiled and turned the switch off the fireplace, striding to the center of the room to greet his guest. “Those with massive power can afford to be magnanimous and give small concessions to those they have securely under their thumb.”

Kal sighed, apparently already frustrated with the conversation. He took a step further into the cell and looked at the untouched tray of food that had been placed on Lex’s desk. “They told me you haven’t had anything to eat since you’ve been here.”

Lex sniffed haughtily. “My food is poisoned.”

Kal huffed a laugh and raised his eyebrow at him. “If we wanted you dead, we’d have no need to resort to such trickery.”

“See?” Lex said, “You do understand.”

Lex picked up the two chairs and carried them to the center of the room, setting them up the way they had been the last time they’d met- facing each other- and gestured for his guest to sit down. Kal cautiously did so, following Lex with his eyes as he took his seat across from him.

“What is it that I understand?” he asked.

“Power dynamics.” Lex explained. “They’re what make the cogs in the machine of life turn.”

When Kal stared at him blankly, Lex elaborated: “You can break life down to its barest simplicity when you see that it is all about power- who has it, who doesn’t have it, who wants it. Those who have power can forge their own way and those without it suffer under them. That’s why most people would like to be among the former. On this planet, now, Kryptonians are the ones with the power and so it costs them nothing to mete out congeniality on their lessers because they are so secure in their position that they have no fear of uprising. That’s why you can visit here and I don’t have to be handcuffed. Or why there’s no need to poison my food.”

Kal meditated on this for a few moments and then said “So then if you don’t think your food is poisoned, why not eat it?”

Lex rolled his eyes. “You don’t understand what I’ve been saying at all.”

“I’m trying!” Kal snapped sullenly.

Lex leaned forward resting his elbows on his knees. “When one has no power left, one takes it in whatever petty form one can.”

Kal rubbed his temples and Lex wondered vaguely if Kryptonians could get headaches or if it was a physical tic he’d picked up from living among humans.

“You can keep me here in this cell and I can do nothing to stop it.” Lex said. “And if I make any means to destroy this room or myself, your guards have already proven they will intervene to stop me. But preventing inaction is more complicated. If the guards want me to eat they’ll have to force feed me. Refusing to cooperate is the least I can do, given my circumstances. It’s the only choice that allows me even a modicum of power over my captors. That allows me a modicum of power over my self, my own body.”

Kal gave him a sardonic look, “You know, when I first came here I wasn’t even sure you would talk to me. Given your logic, I’m a bit surprised that you did. You could refuse to cooperate by not talking.”

Lex’s lips curved up at the corners. “Well, that’s a character defect of mine- the sound of my own voice soothes me.”

“Yes. I can see that.” Kal deadpanned.

Lex smiled winningly at him.

Kal seemed to examine him for a minute. Lex didn’t mind silences in conversation. A person’s silences were often more telling than their words. Where their eyes wandered, the way they twitched under the awkwardness and when they finally gave in. Like many people, Kal's eyes wandered to his metal hand. Lex wasn't sure which made him stuck out more- the hand or the lack of hair. 

“Can I ask you about your hand?” Kal finally broke.

Lex made a show of waving about his non-bionic hand in front of his face. “What about it?”

Kal sighed. “The other one.”

Lex flexed the robotic hand, looking at his work admiringly. “I created it myself. I admit, the design is quite primitive. Limited time and resources necessitated that.”

“What happened to… You know. Your original hand?” Kal asked unsteadily.

“Kryptonite poisoning.” Lex sighed wistfully. “I’m the world’s leading scientific authority on Kryptonite. Unofficially, of course. But it is a volatile substance. And the labs I had to work with were not fully safety equipped. Your kind don’t allow the study of kryptonite. Not even by your own.”

“I’m surprised you were able to acquire any. It’s highly illegal.”

“Deposits of it are still sometimes found near the crash sites. Only trace amounts. The military guild have been careful to dispose of or lock up the rest. On the black market it's the most high priced and rare commodity you can buy or trade for. The kryptonite bomb I used to kill 30 Kryptonians was made with nothing more than a few kryptonite crystals no larger than my fingernail. It took months to even collect that much.”

Lex observed Kal for reaction- to see if he’d go storming out of the room again at the mention of the Kryptonians he’d killed. But he didn’t seem fazed, his Michelangelo sculpted face placid.

“You said you weren’t sure I’d talked to you; but to be honest I wasn’t sure you’d come back to talk to me.” Lex admitted.

Kal smiled with a touch of sadness looking down at his hands folded in his lap. “I’m a scientist- all life is precious to me.”

**Day 21 Of Lu-thor’s Captivity**

Kal was loathe to admit it but he was beginning to look forward to his visits with Lu-thor. It wasn’t that he sympathized with him, but he was a thought provoking subject. Kal found himself unable to sleep the night before he knew he was going to see Lu-thor the next day, tossing and turning thinking about what he would say, what Lu-thor would say, how he would rebut him. By the time he walked down the sterile hallway to the sparse room he had already rehearsed the conversations a hundred times in his head but somehow it never turned out how he planned. Lu-thor always found a way to catch him off guard. This time it was that when Kal came in Lu-thor was half naked.

“Oh…” Kal said uselessly. Lu-thor was on the ground mid push up, the top half of his jumpsuit pulled down and tied around his waist baring his torso. When he was dressed he looked so slender but Kal noted he was actually quite muscular, just wiry and lean.

“You’re here fifteen minutes earlier than the last time you came.” Lu-thor said, completing another push up.

“I could… come back.” Kal offered. He wasn’t sure where he’d go- wait out in the hallway? Lu-thor’s bare head seamlessly met the smooth, pale, expanse of his back. When he pushed himself to his feet his chest was hairless too.

He grabbed a white towel that had been left on the back of his chair and wiped his face off with it, the center of his chest, the back of his neck. Kal observed how the muscles in his arms worked. But then he saw that Lu-thor was looking back at him, too sharp green eyes pinning him, and that he was smirking. Kal averted his eyes as Lu-thor pulled the jumpsuit back on and zipped it. He busied himself pretending to examine the food left on Lu-thor’s tray.

“Still not eating, I see.” he tried to sound casual.

Lu-thor made a disdainful grunt of affirmation and went to the center of the room to sit in his usual chair.

Kal picked up a piece of bread off the tray, ripping it in half and eating it himself. “See?” he said after swallowing. “I ate it and I’m fine. It’s not poisoned.”

Lu-thor regarded him apathetically. “You forget, you could eat cyanide tablets and still be left standing. You and I are of very different constitutions.”

“Oh. That’s right.” Kal said, a touch embarrassed. “But I thought we agreed the other day that it wasn’t poisoned anyway.”

“I thought we agreed I wasn’t going to eat it anyway.”

“I never agreed to that.” Kal pouted.

Lu-thor sighed with impatience. “Sit down.”

Kal obediently pulled the chair from the desk out and sat in it across from Lu-thor once more. Lu-thor’s arms were crossed across his chest.

“Now. When you leave these visits, do you report back to superiors about what takes place during them? About what I say?” Lu-thor asked.

“Yes, I do write up a report.” Kal admitted.

This didn’t seem to bother Lu-thor in fact it made him smile, a little smugly. “And? What do your superiors think of me?”

“Well... They think you’re insane.”

Lu-thor seemed _very_ pleased by this answer and with a dainty shrug said- “Sanity is a matter of perspective.”

Kal reasoned with him, “You mean… to a ‘sane’ man, the ‘insane’ man seems insane but the same is true vice-versa so it’s impossible to tell whose mind is actually defective?”

Lu-thor offered Kal one of his enigmatic smiles. “Just so.”  
  


“Yes…” Kal said slowly. “I’ve been trying to keep that in mind during these interviews. I’d like to be able to understand your point of view.”

Lu-thor shrugged again. “I can only see things my own way. From my eyes, from within the control room of my mind. Just as you hypothetically can only see things your own way.”

Kal shook his head. “I don’t think that’s true at all. People were meant to understand each other. Otherwise why develop the power to communicate and use language?”

“To facilitate lying.” he answered easily.

Kal threw his hands up in frustration. “Of course you would say that.”

“Deceit and coercion were major driving factors in the evolution of complex linguistics.” Lu-thor said innocently while Kal rolled his eyes.

Kal took a moment to think, resting his chin on his fist and knitting his brows together before he cleared his throat and said: “Then instead of speaking as sane man to insane man, let us speak to each other as two men of science.”

Lu-thor, who’d waited patiently during his silence, blithely answered “I have no objection.”

“I’ve been thinking…” Kal started slowly. “About the things you’ve said before. About why you hate us. I’ve been trying to imagine. But it’s like you said- I can’t see into your thoughts and you can’t see into mine. I come to the argument with my own bias and find myself defending my own stance even as I try to see things your way.”

Kal stood up abruptly. “May I pace?”

Lu-thor lifted one eyebrow. “If you like.”

Kal took a turn around the room, his hands folded behind his back. “I think that we Kryptonians are well suited to co-habitate this planet with you. We are alike.”

“In body?” Lu-thor interjected.

“Yes.” Kal said. “But also in values.”

Lu-thor scoffed. “Yes, well. For all we know there’s a race of carrot humanoids somewhere in the galaxy and if they arrived on this planet they would see us eating carrots, think us barbarians, and kill us all. That isn’t the type of situation we’re dealing with but there’s an endless amount of hypotheticals that would lead to humanity’s immediate annihilation that I don’t think are worth exploration.”

“Well that would be happenstance. It was no accident that we chose earth as our destination. We sought out a planet with peoples we thought were similar to us and with whom we could coexist.”

Lu-thor’s eyes narrowed at him and he said tightly, “No. You chose a planet where you would be gods under a yellow sun.”

“Lu-thor…” Kal could hear exasperation in his own voice. “Even you have to admit that as you said- across the far flung reaches of the galaxy, of every type of living creature, Kryptonians and humans are more alike than we are different.”

Lu-thor just glared at him in moody silence.

“We mentioned language just now. Kryptonians and humans both have language that is speech and written word. That in and of itself is a miraculous similarity. Language is predicated on the notion that our experiences may not be the same but that they are comparable. That when I say the word ‘sadness’ for instance, it corresponds to a meaning we can both agree on.”

“I’d write it off as an example of convergent evolution, same as many of the other resemblances between our species.” Lu-thor said.

“Yes… But these aren’t surface level similarities. Kryptonians also share many higher values with humanity. We experience empathy.”

Lu-thor cocked his head to one side. “Empathy? Humanity’s curse. I’d almost call it an aberration.”

Kal groaned out loud.

“First- don’t act like empathy is some universal constant. It is context dependent, it varies from person to person.” Lu-thor continued. “Second- empathy is not some noble choice made by humanity, it is an instinct produced by the front of our brains as involuntary as a knee-jerk reaction that is often unreliable and illogical. It is easily manipulated and often biased. Some of the cruelest atrocities of society are due to misplaced empathy. Empathy when twisted can cause racism, violence, war. Empathetic priorities change all the time, they are inconsistent- it’s a completely unreliable motivator for moral behavior.”

Kal had sat back down in his chair during the lecture and had his head in his hands. “Has anyone ever told you that you are a contrarian?”

“Who cares if we’re alike in some of our faults? From my observations, I’ve found that humans and Kryptonians are both petty, selfish, prone to bouts of irrationality, histrionic… What matters is that out of these two groups, only one can shoot fire out of their eyes and level buildings when they’re mad.”

Kal lifted his head wearily. “So it all comes back to power- just like you’ve been saying. Is that it?”

“When homo sapiens first started walking around on two legs we were not the dominant species and had to fear many predators and natural threats. But give us a few hundred years- we mastered fire, created the wheel, invented guns, skyscrapers… Do you know what quality I admire in humans? That we are indomitable. You will never grasp the reasons I hate your kind. It would require you to understand something that you are incapable of understanding.”

“Which is?”

Lu-thor smirked. “Human nature.”

As if Lu-thor had timed it purposefully, the guard knocked on the door to signal Kal that his time was up.

**Day 29 of Lu-thor’s Captivity**

Kal’s initial fear of him seemed to have worn off. It was a bit of a blow to Lex’s ego. Now he walked in the door practically with a skip in his step, no apprehension present. He paused halfway through the room and looked disapprovingly at the full tray of food on Lex’s desk once again and then looked back at Lex, scanning him with his eyes. Lex idly wondered if he was using his x-ray vision on him.

“Still nothing to eat…?” Kal sighed.

“Not hungry.” Lex lied. His stomach felt so hollow it was hard to sleep and his muscles burned with soreness even to sit up. Every day he felt the steep decline in his energy, his own bones felt unnaturally large in his too tight skin. But it was too late to even feel tempted by the food he had to ignore everyday, already at the point of starvation where the smell of it turned his weak stomach.

Kal gave him a pitying, kicked puppy, look. “Won’t you even have a few bites? You look…”

He could only imagine how he looked. Could feel the gauntness of his own face and see his skeleton protruding in his own wrists and hips.

“No.” Lex cut him off curtly. “Your kind have already infantilized my entire species, I won’t have you micromanaging my personal eating habits.”

Kal’s frown deepened and he picked up the glass of water on the tray, bringing it over to Lex. “I’d feel better if I could at least see you drink something while I’m here. Your kind is fragile, you won’t last long without water.”

“Hnn. Another way you Kryptonians are superior to us mere beasts, I suppose.” Lex grumbled but accepted the water, taking a long drink to appease his guest who smiled brightly at him in return.

Lex settled into his usual chair and watched Kal daintily tuck the cape of his tunic under himself before he sat down across from him.

“And what have you been up to?” Lex said casually.

“Multilayered polycaprolactone fiber-hydrogel composites.”

“Ah!” Lex said, perking up. “Tissue engineering. And how goes the good fight?”

“A bit challenging. We’ve been able to create some grafts with good biocompatibility but matching the cell phenotype of the native tissue is still a hurdle. Kryptonian technology still has catching up to do when it comes to some of the unique profiles and architecture of biological material found exclusively on earth.” Kal rambled on before catching himself and narrowing his eyes at Lex who raised his eyebrows innocently. “Wait. Don’t try to trick me into talking about my own work. We're here to talk about you.”

Lex shrugged one shoulder, bored. “What’s to tell? I re-arrange the furniture every once in a while. Sometimes they let me do sit ups or push ups on the floor if I behave myself.”

Kal’s eyes twinkled with amusement. “And do you behave yourself?”

“Very rarely.” Lex smirked.

Kal’s smiles were as saccharinely wholesome as a schoolboy’s. Hard to believe his teeth could break through pure steel.

“Some days,” Lex confided, “I just stand by the fireplace switching it on and off again until the guard out there gets annoyed.” He tilted his head toward the door.

Kal stifled a laugh behind his hand. “Stop it. He can hear you saying that out there.”

“He can hear you laughing at him too.” Lex pointed out.

Kal’s face settled back into complacent amusement. “I admit I have been wondering how you occupied your time here.”

“You mean how I while away the hours waiting for you to come back?”

The alien rolled his eyes at this, unconvinced. “Sure. If you like.”

“I admit the environment is not very stimulating but I have my mind. It’s all I need to entertain me. ‘Nothing is your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.’”

Kal nodded, accepting this.

“That was a quote.” Lex explained. “From 1984 by George Orwell.”

“Oh.” Kal said airily. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“Of course not.” Lex said dryly. “The ultimate irony- it’s one of the books that’s been banned in the last twenty years.”

Kal didn’t flinch as easily as he used to but he shifted a little in his chair and avoided direct eye contact as he defended, “Those books are from the past, from another type of world. They’re full of violence and strife. We have no need for those things anymore and when people read about them they just learn that they’re an option.”

Lex recognized the justification as a recycling of some of the official statements made by Kryptonians when they’d started their meticulous, sterile, ransacking of libraries and book stores years ago.

“You would say that? As a man of science? You would endorse the censorship of knowledge?”

Kal shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “It’s different for me… I never read those books to begin with so it doesn’t feel like as much of a loss. The people of my planet lost so much of our culture when we lost our home. But it’s important to look to the future.”

Lex shook his head slowly. “It isn’t about looking to the future and it isn’t about preventing violence. The Kryptonians don’t want humans to be capable of thinking critically. They want us dumb, passive, and obedient.”

Lex stood up and walked over to the window. It wasn’t an ideal view of Metropolis. But the skyline looked very different than it had when he was nine years old and in his father’s office anyway. The crystalline fortresses sprouted among the skyscrapers glowed in a prism of rainbows as light from the setting sun illuminated them. Even some of the buildings that still stood from his childhood memories were engulfed now in Kryptonian tech- spires and skeletal layers of wiring that provided clean energy, solar power, indestructible force fields, crawling up the walls of comparatively primitive structures the way ivy crawls up stone.

“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle. Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing…” Lex recited to the window’s view.

“That’s beautiful. Poetry?” Kal said, behind him.

“Shakespeare…” Lex mumbled. “You wouldn’t know him…”

Kal was silent for a few moments and then said, “I’m sorry not to.”

“There are many things of worth that have been lost under your people’s regime. One day people like me, who remember what it was like before you came here, will all have died out. And those things will be gone from us forever.” Lex turned to look at his visitor.

“It’s not too late.” Kal spoke. His eyes so blue and imploring that they couldn’t be real. Could never be human. “Things can change. I’m learning from you.”

“They’re not all like you.” Lex said quietly.

Maybe that was just another difference between humans and Kryptonians. That Kryptonians could be so blind and yet so sure. Kal seemed to operate under the illusion that life was fair when nothing could be farther from the truth. The last person who had ever loved Lex died when he was 11. And since then he’d been trying to kill monsters who wore human faces. Life was a waking nightmare.

“I’m tired. I’ve had enough talking for today.” Lex said, walking over to his cot and stretching out like a cat on it. He gave an exaggerated yawn.

“From what? All you do is sit around all day.” Kal teased him.

This made Lex bark out a laugh. “Perhaps its just you that exhausts me.”

But when their smiles faded they both knew it wasn’t that. Lex had seen how Kal looked at him with concern, like he was frail and might break at any moment. Lex had been forced to go hungry many times over his life. There was a type of clarity of thought that it brought, a sharpness that seemed to bring everything into place for the first few days of fasting. But then it gave way to fuzziness; a leaden, heavy weakness in a too light body.

His days were getting shorter, more time spent sleeping. On good days he dreamt of his mother. On bad days he dreamt of his father. Some nights he dreamt of nothing at all; heavy, deep sleeps, and he wondered if that was what death would feel like when it came. But he reminded himself that he wasn’t ready to die quite yet.

**Day 36 of Lu-thor’s Captivity**

Kal had never seen anyone starve to death. It was unheard of now- food waste and limited food resource were problems of the past since Kryptonian farming and transportation technology had been introduced on earth. World hunger had been ended years ago. He had never seen someone’s body eroding, getting smaller, the way Lu-thor’s was doing with every visit… And while he couldn’t begin to understand it, he thought it must hurt though he had little reference himself for what pain felt like in his own body. But he had seen humans experience it many times. Had done everything he could to alleviate it. He’d watched humans he couldn’t save die, sometimes in his arms, but never had he seen the proccess move so slowly up close like this. But when he came to Lu-thor’s cell that day his body looked skeletal, almost child-like in its frailty.

He didn’t even get up to meet Kal, he sat in his chair with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders in front of the virtual fireplace, the shadow of the flames dancing across his gaunt face. Kal pulled up a chair to sit beside him. Lu-thor barely looked up but he said, hoarsely: “What are we going to argue about today?”

“Your health.” Kal said tightly, his hands fisted at his sides.

Lu-thor smirked, turning his head to look at him. “How boring.”

“Lu-thor,” Kal raised his voice, “This is a useless show of defiance. It won’t get you anywhere.”

The prisoner chuckled. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I wasn’t going anywhere to begin with.”

“I’m glad you have the energy to make jokes.” Kal fumed.

Lu-thor’s metal hand looked too large on his body now, and with his arms crossed across his lap it looked like he was cradling it in arms too thin to hold it up. But even so, that half-sneer half-smirk twisted his scarred lips.

“When I first came here, you Kryptonians could have had me executed at any time. But you can’t force me to live. I can choose to die if I wish.”

“Or you could live to fight another day.” Kal implored him. “You have no idea what could happen. Some sort of pardon could be arranged for you. You could leave here to work in a lab.”

“What would it matter?” Lu-thor asked, his voice hollow, his eyes distant. “All of earth is a prison now with alien guards. Humans can never be happy in a cage, no matter how large or luxurious you make the cage.”

Kal hissed, leaning forward, almost conspiratorily, “You’re brilliant. You’ve already done the unthinkable, now can’t you put your genius to use saving lives instead of taking them? You could teach us how to be better. Change the world instead of just trying to destroy it.”

At this Lu-thor laughed and it wracked his fragile frame so it looked as if he was trembling. “Working with you to benefit Kryptonian society? I think not. I’d prefer to rot.”

“You’d rather die than let go of your spite?” Kal snapped. And realized that his eyes were burning hot with tears of frustration. They must have shone in the false firelight because Lu-thor seemed to notice them and his face shifted first to something unreadable to Kal, and then to pity.

Lu-thor said, “You’re soft. Weak. So much misplaced care. Remember when we discussed empathy? How useless it is when wasted on the wrong people? You could die tomorrow and I’d feel nothing. So don’t bother crying for me.”

Kal gulped at the stubborn lump in his throat, swiped at his eyes even though he knew it only made him look more pathetic.

“You can’t save me.” Lu-thor said, looking into the fire so the color of it mirrored on his pale eyes. “You never will. Maybe that’s as good a revenge as any.”

**Day 36 of Luthor's Captivity- Night**

Kal flew home that night and thought about the prisoner. But the prisoner was not thinking about him. Lu-thor was admitted to the medical ward four hours after Kal arrived home, for a heart attack brought on by autophagy- symptomatic of his starvation. Lu-thor was promptly treated and resuscitated. Two hours after Lu-thor’s admission into the medical ward, a prison wide alarm went off. The guards rushed to the medical ward where the alarm had been triggered and found that the outer wall of the room had been destroyed from the inside leaving a gaping hole to the outside world. The entire ward had been ransacked and torn apart and there were two injured Kryptonian nursing staff. After a thorough search had been conducted of the scene it was found that 14 kryptonite tipped scalpels, 10 kryptonite syringes, and 6 blood transfusion packs containing Kryptonite blood had been taken. Lu-thor, the only patient who had been in the ward at that time, was nowhere to be found.

It seemed unexplainable and at first appraisal the Kryptonian officers could not account for how it had happened- how an unarmed, sickly, human prisoner had caused such a level of damage and in such a short amount of time and escaped unhindered. Until a note was discovered from Lu-thor himself which helpfully elucidated the situation. The note was addressed to Kal-el who was roused from his sleep and called back to the prison facility to be informed of Lu-thor’s escape and who was given the note to read. Lu-thor’s letter read as follows-

_The last three weeks we’ve spent together you have been a great listener and for that I can only show you my gratitude by giving you this final insight to my mind. I knew that I was going to be captured when I set off that bomb in Metropolis. Being caught, was in fact, half of the point._

_As I told you on the first day we met- Kryptonite is a commodity in short supply wherein even scarce amounts are incredibly rare. But it isn’t quite true that all the Kryptonite found by the Kryptonians has also been locked away by them. For under a yellow sun, the Kryptonian epidermis is impenetrable even by the strongest metal. This is why when Kryptonians do under rare occasion have health complication or injury (an occurrence that happens rarely in public life but frequently in Kryptonian to Kryptonian altercations in Kryptonian prison) the operations and testing upon them must be done with? Kryptonite. Kryptonite scalpels, kryptonite syringes. The bomb that I made which levelled two blocks and killed nine of your kind was made with a chip of kryptonite the size of my thumbnail. Imagine what I could do with more? With enough to run further tests and experiment on?_

_On the subject of experimentation, after I set off that bomb I absconded to a nearby bunker and lab in the city which is where I was found and arrested. It was one of my low security hideaways. I estimated it would take the military guild about 50 minutes to find me there. Instead, it took them two hours. That provided me with ample time to go through with my plan. For the last seven months I’d been working on creating something to give us regular humans an even playing field- a serum that could emulate the superhuman powers of the Kryptonians in regular humans. However, all my work until that point had been painfully theoretical. What I needed was Kryptonian tissue samples and blood to complete my work._

_To kill a Kryptonian is a joy in and of itself. But on this occasion, their deaths served a secondary purpose. I was able to salvage samples from their bodies once they’d been opened up so nicely by the bomb that I planted. I took them back to my lab and luckily, I am a fast worker. In the two hours that it took the military guild to determine my location, I successfully synthesized a drug that would give me super powers for several hours after ingestion._

_I had the drug at my disposal then but in that lab I only had the resources to make one dose. Which was probably for the best as it would not leave sufficient evidence of what I had done to the Kryptonians arresting me._

_I knew that it would be better to bide my time and let myself be caught than to fight back. Even with super powers, I doubted I would fare well against multiple Kryptonians who had been living with their powers for years and who were trained in combat. More importantly, I had already decided that the best way to procure the materials I needed for my work was to steal them from a place where Kryptonians undergo medical treatment but such facilities are few and all heavily guarded. There was no circumstance that would allow me to enter freely into a Kryptonian hospital but to a prison? You placed me exactly where I wanted to be._

_There were some minor complications to this otherwise straightforward plan._

_The first was contriving an excuse to be admitted into the medical wing. Although the security around me was embarrassingly meager, I did attempt to injure myself on my first day in captivity and was stopped before I had the opportunity. I had to resort then to my backup plan which was more long winded and inconvenient but ultimately proved effective._

_The second complication was my means of escape. The super power serum I had created was in a pill form which was conveniently pocket sized and easy to hide. The trouble was even stray lint in pockets is visible to the Kryptonian eye and would be discovered in the first X-ray search of my person. But for this too I had a contingency plan. You see, having a hand made out of metal is not without its uses. You and the guards who searched me when I arrived probably observed that it is made of a variety of different metals scrapped together. A bit of iron here, steel here, lead there… There is a 1 inch section of lead that replaces the palmer arch of my hand that actually contains a hollow space. This is where I hid the pill that I had invented. Since Kryptonians can not see through lead it was invisible even to your keen senses and because it’s such a small section of the prosthetic, none of you had any reason to investigate it further or suspect that it was hollow._

_Every aspect of this plot hinged on an important factor- that you would all underestimate me. In the same way that if I caught an insect under a glass I would never suspect it of strategizing against me. Being thought of as an inferior species sometimes has its benefits. But now I think that you at least will not underestimate me again, Kal-el. I have enough kryptonite and Kryptonian blood samples now to adequately fuel my research as well as create new weapons for the next steps I plan to take._

_Your power on this planet has gone unchecked for long enough. If the Kryptonians are the all-powerful kings of this world now then at least know this- from now on I will be your sword of Damocles. Your Diomedes, driving false gods from the battlefield. I will not stop until the earth is eradicated of your kind. Until you kill me, or until I kill all of you, you can be assured that I will be working toward this goal._

_I have already created dozens of fortified labs and hide aways across the world, waiting for my return, that you will not be able to discover nearly as easily as you did my last one. And when you do find me, I will be ready to fight back in ways no other human has ever dared defy you and kill whoever attempts get in my way._

_But I invite you to try. I told you, what matters in this world is power. So let’s see you test your mettle against me. They call you the men of tomorrow but they are wrong. You are wrong. I am the man of tomorrow. And it starts with taking back today._

_\- “Diomedes” Lex Luthor_

The guards were confused when Kal smiled at the letter. He wondered where Lu-thor was headed first. He pictured him someplace warm and tropical where canopies of trees shadowed his face and sweat pooled between his shoulders as he worked. Or maybe he was hiding in plain sight in a city, maybe even his city, with a cap pulled low and his collar pulled high to hide his lack of hair. For the past two weeks all he’d been able to think of was images of Lu-thor dead and now, if he was honest, he could feel nothing but relief. Maybe, as he’d been accused of by some of his peers before, he just loved humans too much. Or he had a soft spot for the under dog. Maybe it was true what Lex had said- that he was too soft and had confused his priorities.

He thought about Lu-thor picking up the newspaper first thing after he escaped and seeing what had been happening during the weeks he’d been cut off from the world in his little cell. Headlines of human uprisings across America, starting in Metropolis, protests and riots, copycat attacks on the National Kryptonopolis Bank, outrage at the excessive force of the Krptonian guard on the human crowds. Kal could see Lu-thor’s grin perfectly in his mind- the thin flash of white teeth behind scarred lips. It would be a terrible inflation of his ego when he found out groups were already starting to appear that hailed him as a hero, the genius who’d discovered a defense against the aliens.

Kal sighed, still smiling, and carefully folded the note in half, handing it back to the military guard.

“Well?” the guard demanded. “You’ve been interrogating him for weeks now. Where is Lu-thor going to head next?”

Kal laughed incredulously. “You think I know? If there’s anything I’ve learned from speaking with Lu-thor it’s his unpredictability.”

The guard scowled at him. “He’s only a human. They lack the intelligence to outmaneuver us.”

“Hmm.” Kal said, with a twinkle in his eye, “I think you’ll find that human beings can be very surprising creatures.”

End.

_Texts quoted-_

_Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison by Michel Foucault_

_Homer's The Iliad_

_1984 by George Orwell_

_Macbeth by William Shakespeare_

**Author's Note:**

> Given another two weeks I would either edit/revise this much more or not have written it at all. I think the deadline was a good motivator but this isn't a fic that I put too much effort into the prose with (in comparison to the fic I'm posting tomorrow which is shorter)- the dialogue is what I wrote first and its kind of the central point of the fic. I've been fondly referring to this fic in my mind as the "Hannibal and Clarice Silence of the Lambs Clex story." 
> 
> I hope someone enjoys this because I had fun writing it but I feel apologetic to readers as it doesn't have Clex actually hooking up... Go to one of my other smuttier fics to get your fix after reading this maybe. 
> 
> Oh and this fic would not be possible without my writing soundtrack of Evil by Interpol and Psycho by Red Velvet.


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